


Insomnia

by voodoochild



Category: Firefly
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-22
Updated: 2010-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-08 05:19:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon has never had trouble sleeping, until now. Luckily, Inara knows how to deal with this type of thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insomnia

**Author's Note:**

> Written for **penumbren**, for the prompt "Simon &amp; anyone, late nights".

As a child, Simon slept very well.

He never had nightmares, and nothing really kept him up at night. River was forever getting in trouble for playing on her swingset at 3 am because "the breeze was perfectly angled to push me even higher", or practicing _battements tendues_ and _grande plies_ on the kitchen floor in her pointe shoes at 4 am because she felt more limber then. Not Simon - he'd be asleep in his bed when it was curfew and up for school the next day.

In medical school, Simon was never the type of student who pulled all-nighters studying for exams. In his opinion, you either knew what you were doing, or you did not. Simon studied a chapter of anatomy every night before he went to sleep at a reasonable hour, and awoke early to go jogging around the quad for some exercise. He drove his roommate insane, but Simon had become Doctor Simon Tam, and the last he heard of his roommate, Noel Vincent was a used-ship salesman out on Beylix.

These past few weeks on Serenity, he'd become used to waking up for River's nightmares, soothing her with promises to never leave and dyasthaproponil when nothing else would work. But he never woke up himself in the middle of rest cycle like the rest of the crew. Never did pull-ups in the cargo bay like Jayne, or finished up work like Kaylee. Never sat in the cockpit to watch a planetside sunrise like Wash and Zoe, stayed up reading like Shepherd Book, or paced the decks like Mal.

So it was very odd for Simon to find River out cold in bed and himself completely unable to sleep late one night. He'd tried everything - exercise, reading, listening to the Cortex, meditation - and was starting to go just a little mad with boredom and frustration. _Tzao gao_, what was it going to take?

He figured maybe Mal had been onto something, and pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt before exiting the guest quarters. The decks were chilly, and he rubbed the goosebumps on his arms absently as he walked the catwalks in the cargo bay - carefully, of course, lest he slip on a slippery beam and fall. He found himself, for no particular reason, outside of Inara's shuttle. Simon hesitated, then knocked softly on the door. If she were asleep, she wouldn't hear it.

"_Ching jin_," she called softly.

The door pushed open easily - Kaylee had recently fixed the squeak on them - and Inara stood to greet him, wrapped in a beautiful green silk robe he recognized as made by one of the designers on Osiris.

"Simon, what a surprise. What can I do for you?"

He hesitated before entering, closing the door behind him and sitting awkwardly on one of her overstuffed pillows. "I can't sleep. I was out wandering the cargo bay, not sure why, and I just- I wanted to talk to you."

She smiled, that serene smile that marked her immediately as a Companion. He'd known a few on Osiris, even employed one as an escort to a dinner while he was in medical school, but Inara was in a class of her own. She had been one of the first on Serenity to trust him, ordering Mal to cut and run when Dobson shot Kaylee. He'd watched her as she held vigil over Kaylee, and appreciated her taking the time to speak to him, instead of about him, like the rest of the crew.

"Of course. I often find that insomnia is best combatted by unburdening what's been on one's mind. Is there something you're worried about, Simon?"

"Besides the usual, you mean?" At her quizzical look, he shook his head. "My sister's brain got scrambled like an egg by the government, we're fugitives with a price on our heads that rivals my father's gross income for one year, and we're stuck on this flying rust bucket with a bunch of Browncoats, a Shepherd, and Jayne."

Inara rose to her feet and went to her tea table, calmly setting about brewing cups of tea for each of them. She carefully strained the hot water through the tea leaves, and placed lumps of sugar on a plate. She passed a china cup to him as she sat down beside him, perfectly at ease though she was sitting on a cold metal floor.

"I don't think there's anything I could say to you that would make any of that go away. They are simply aspects of your life now. Aspects that, however deeply you may wish, you cannot change. What, then, is the solution to an unsolvable problem, Doctor Tam?"

Simon stared at her in confusion. "All problems have a solution. Maybe not an immediately identifiable one, but a solution is there."

"And how does one go about finding it?"

"If I knew that, Inara," he said in irritation, "I wouldn't be keeping you awake at 4 in the morning."

She didn't answer, merely continuing to sip her tea slowly. He drank quickly at first, but slowed down to simply sip with her in silence. He drained the cup, and she reached over to gently take it from him, setting it on the table. Her black hair curled over her shoulders and whipped about her face as she turned back to him.

"Perhaps, then, all one needs is time to sleep on it. The tea was chamomile and fennel, which should take care of your insomnia. And as for that unsolvable problem of yours - let it go for another day." Thanking her with a formal bow as she escorted him to the door of the shuttle, he stopped as she addressed him. "Oh, and Simon? Despite what Mal would have you believe, you and your sister are welcome here any time."

Welcome? On Serenity?

Simon thinks he could get used to that.


End file.
